38th murderer executed in U.S. in 2005
982nd murderer executed in U.S. since 1976
13th murderer executed in Texas in 2005
349th murderer executed in Texas since 1976
11th female murderer executed in U.S. since 1976
3rd female murderer executed in Texas since 1976

Summary:
In March 1987, Newton took out $50,000 life insurance policies on her 23-year-old husband, Adrian, and her 21-month old daughter, Farrah. A policy already existed for her 7-year-old son, Alton. At the time, the Newtons were having marital problems. Although they lived together, they were both dating other people. On April 7, 1987, police were dispatched to their apartment complex on a report of a possible shooting. The deputy found the bodies Newton's husband and two children, each shot to death with a .25 caliber handgun. Newton and her cousin were at the location when the deputy arrived. Earlier in the evening, Newton took a blue bag out of her car and put it in an abandoned house which belonged to her parents. A homicide detective later recovered the bag, which containing a .25 automatic pistol. A ballistics expert established that the pistol was the murder weapon. Gunpowder residue was found on Newton's skirt. Newton, the primary beneficiary on the insurance policies, made claims on the policies following the killings. Newton maintained her innocence throughout, blaming the killings on an unknown drug dealer who was owed money by her husband.

AUSTIN – Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott offers the following information about Frances Elaine Newton, who is scheduled to be executed after 6 p.m. Wednesday, September 14, 2005. Newton was sentenced to death in 1988 for murdering her 21-month-old daughter, Farrah Elaine Newton, at the same time she also killed her husband, Adrian Newton, and her 7-year-old son, Alton Newton.

FACTS OF THE CRIME

On the evening of April 7, 1987, a Harris County sheriff’s deputy was dispatched to an apartment complex at 6126 West Mount Houston in response to a report of a possible shooting. The deputy found the bodies of the three victims inside the apartment. All three had been shot to death. Newton and her cousin were at the location when the deputy arrived.

Earlier in the evening, Newton took her son Alton’s blue knapsack out of her car and put it in an abandoned house which belonged to her relatives. She then went next door to her cousin’s home, and invited her to come visit at the apartment on West Mount Houston. A homicide detective later recovered the blue bag, which contained a .25 caliber Raven Arms automatic pistol. A ballistics expert established that the pistol was the murder weapon. A retest of the weapon also verified that the weapon was the murder weapon.

The gun’s owner testified at trial that he had loaned the gun to his cousin Jeffrey Freelow five or six months prior to the murders. In turn, Freelow identified the gun and indicated that he kept it in a chest of drawers in his master bedroom. Freelow had known Newton since junior high school, and began a relationship with her approximately one to two months prior to the murders. Because Newton often did his laundry, she had access to the drawers and to the gun.

A forensics expert for the State established that nitrites were present on the skirt Newton wore on the day of the shootings. In the expert’s opinion, the nitrites came from gunpowder residue and were consistent with someone shooting a pistol in the lower front area of the skirt.

Less than a month prior to the murders, Newton purchased a $50,000 life insurance policy on herself, another on her husband, and a third on her daughter. Newton, the primary beneficiary on the latter two policies, made claims on the policies following the killings.

CRIMINAL HISTORY

A previous employer testified that Newton was fired from her job for stealing money. Newton was also convicted of forgery in December 1985 and placed on three years probation.

PROCEDURAL HISTORY

04/07/87 - Newton commits the capital offense of murdering more than one person during the same criminal transaction.
07/17/87 - The grand jury indicts Newton for capital murder.
10/24/88 - Newton is convicted of capital murder.
10/25/88 - A Harris County jury answers the special issues in a manner which results in Newton being sentenced to death
06/17/92 - The Texas Court of Criminal Appals affirms Newton’s conviction and sentence.
06/28/93 - The U.S. Supreme Court denies certiorari review.
08/26/93 - The U.S. Supreme Court denies rehearing.
04/26/96 - Newton files a state writ of habeas corpus application.
12/06/00 - The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals adopts the trial court’s findings and conclusions, and denies the writ.
12/06/01 - Newton petitions a Houston federal district court for a writ of habeas corpus relief.
08/29/03 - The federal district court denies the writ, denies a certificate of appealability (“COA”), and issues final judgment.
11/04/03 - Newton applies to the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals for a COA.
05/20/04 - The Fifth Circuit Court denies Newton’s request.
07/07/04 - The Harris County trial court set Newton’s execution for December 1, 2004.
08/16/04 - Newton petitions the U.S. Supreme Court for certiorari review of the 5th Circuit’s denial of COA.
11/01/04 - The U.S. Supreme Court denies certiorari review.
11/10/04 - Newton petitions for clemency with the Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles**
11/18/04 - Newton asked the trial court for a stay of execution and appointment of counsel or, for a successive habeas application in the trial court.
11/24/04 - Newton asked the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals for a stay of execution and for appointment of counsel to investigate and prepare filing a successive federal habeas petition or, alternatively, for the court to grant leave for Newton to file a successive federal writ.
11/29/04 - The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals dismissed Newton’s successive state habeas application.
11/29/04 - A majority of the Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles recommended granting Newton a 120-day reprieve.
11/30/04 - The 5th Circuit denied all of Newton’s motions.
12/01/04 - Newton asked the U.S. Supreme Court for a stay of execution and petitions for certiorari review of the Fifth Circuit’s decision.
12/01/04 - Texas Gov. Rick Perry accepted the Parole Board’s recommendation and granted a 120-day reprieve “to provide time for a further forensic review of the evidence in this case, specifically one skirt and ballistics.”
01/06/05 - The Harris County trial court ordered the release and retesting of the State’s ballistics evidence consisting of the murder weapon and three projectiles.
01/27/05 - Testing of the ballistics evidence was conducted by a defense expert and by the Harris County Sheriff’s Department firearm examiner at the Harris County sheriff’s office facilities.
02/11/05 - Defense expert Frederic Tulleners issues his report affirming that the three bullets or projectiles recovered from the victims’ bodies match the bullets test-fired from the .25 caliber Raven Arms automatic pistol.
03/07/05 - The U.S. Supreme Court denied Newton’s two petitions for writ of certiorari.
03/17/05 - The trial court denied Newton’s request for further testing of evidence.
04/21/05 - After the expiration of Governor Perry’s 120-day reprieve, the Harris County trial court scheduled Newton’s execution for Wednesday September 14, 2005.
07/28/05 - Newton filed a third state habeas application raising three claims.
08/03/05 - The State moved to dismiss Newton’s writ application.
08/24/05 - The Court of Criminal Appeals dismissed Newton’s third state habeas application.
08/24/05 - Newton petitioned the Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles for clemency.
08/29/05 - Newton filed in federal district court a motion for relief from judgment, for stay of execution, and for discovery.
08/30/05 - Federal district court transferred Newton’s motion to the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals for a ruling on whether it counts as a successive federal habeas petition.
09/06/05 - Newton filed a motion in the 5th U.S. Circuit Court seeking authorization to file a successive federal habeas petititon.
09/07/05 - Newton filed a fourth state habeas application with the trial court
09/08/05 - The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals dismissed Newton's fourth state habeas.
09/12/05 - The 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals denied Newton's application for authority to file a successive habeas petition and motion for a stay of execution.
09/12/05 - Newton asked the U.S. Supreme Court to review her case and she filed an original petition for writ of habeas corpus. She also asked the court for a stay of execution.
09/12/05 - The Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles voted to recommend that the governor not grant clemency to Newton.

HUNTSVILLE — Frances Newton was executed today for the fatal shootings of her husband and two children 18 years ago, becoming the third woman, and first black woman, to be put to death in the state since executions resumed in 1982.

Strapped to the death chamber gurney and with her parents among the people watching, she declined to make a final statement, quietly saying "no" and shaking her head when the warden asked if she would like to speak.
Newton, 40, briefly turned her head to make eye contact with her family as the drugs began flowing. She appeared to attempt to mouth something to her relatives, but the drugs took effect. She coughed once and gasped as her eyes closed and her mouth remained slightly open. Eight minutes later at 6:17 p.m. CDT, she was pronounced dead.

One of her sisters stood flat against a wall at the rear of the death house, her arms raised against the wall and her head buried in her arms, refusing to watch. Her parents held hands and her mother brushed away a tear before they walked to the back of the chamber to console their other daughter.

About 50 demonstrators chanted outside but the crowd paled in comparison to the group of hundreds that assembled in 1998 to protest the execution of Karla Faye Tucker, who was the first woman executed in Texas since the Civil War.
"She's back with her family, in her mind," said John LaGrappe, one of her attorneys, who met with Newton less than two hours before she was executed and described her as "strong and optimistic."
"It's her faith in God," LaGrappe said.
He characterized her as the victim of a set of statutes that denied her access to the Supreme Court and blamed state-appointed lawyers early in her appeals process for missing deadlines that barred Newton from raising legal claims.
"It's a sad statement about the judicial process," he said. "To me, this is outrageous."

Two cousins of Newton's slain husband, who also watched the execution, complained that too much attention had been focused on Newton, and not enough on the three murder victims.
"I wanted her to apologize, just to confess," Tamika Craft-Demming said. "I don't know if you can get any satisfaction.

"Justice is not to me served. If we saw some kind of apology, that would have been justice."
Craft-Demming, who sobbed loudly in the death chamber, described Newton as a "mean and kind of evil-spirited person. I knew she was vindictive. None of these things have been talked about.
"I did have a rough go in that room," she said of her experience in the death chamber, where she broke down in tears. "I'd like to say not one tear was for Frances. They were for the kids."

Without dissent, the high court declined a pair of appeals about an hour before Newton was scheduled to be taken to the Texas death chamber.
The Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles, which last year paved the way for Gov. Rick Perry to issue a reprieve about two hours before Newton was set to die, on Monday unanimously rejected a request that her death sentence be commuted to life in prison. Perry rejected another delay in the execution Wednesday afternoon.
She also lost appeals in state and lower federal courts. Her execution was the 13th this year in Texas. She was the 11th woman executed in the United States since the Supreme Court in 1976 allowed the death penalty to resume.

Newton didn't deny putting a gun in her 7-year-old son's knapsack and stashing the bag at an abandoned house. But she and her lawyers argued the .25-caliber blue steel revolver she hid was not the one used to fatally shoot her son, Alton; her 21-month-old daughter, Farrah; and her husband, Adrian, 23, at their Houston apartment.
Newton insisted she was innocent, and the claim about the gun was among several in her appeal to the Supreme Court. She also contended her trial attorneys were incompetent and evidence at her trial improperly was destroyed.
"I know I did not murder my kids and my family," she told The Associated Press in a death row interview. "It's frustrating ... nobody's had to answer for that."

Prosecutors called Newton's appeals meritless, noting that a second gun never was recovered, that repeated ballistics tests confirmed the gun she hid was the murder weapon, and that any destruction of evidence was not improper.
"The unbroken chain of custody directly links Newton to the murder weapon," the Texas Attorney General's Office said in its filing to the Supreme Court.

Newton, accompanied by a cousin, found the bodies April 7, 1987. Her husband had been shot in the head, the two children in the chest, all with a .25-caliber pistol.

Three weeks before the slayings, Newton took out $50,000 life insurance policies on herself, her husband and her daughter. She named herself as beneficiary and said she signed her husband's name to prevent him from discovering she had set aside money to pay for the premiums.
Prosecutors said the insurance payoff was the motive for the slayings.

The reprieve last year was granted to allow for additional ballistics testing on the weapon. In March, the new ballistics tests confirmed earlier findings and Harris County officials then rescheduled her execution.
Newton believed the real killer is or may be related to a drug dealer she knew only as "Charlie," who she said was upset with her husband for not repaying a $500 debt.

HOUSTON, Sept 14 (Reuters) - A woman convicted of killing her family became the first black female on Wednesday to be executed in Texas since before the U.S. Civil War after last-minute legal and political pleas to save her failed.
Frances Newton, 40, died by lethal injection for the April 1987 shooting deaths of her husband and two children. Prosecutors said the motive was $100,000 in life insurance but Newton blamed the killings on an unknown drug dealer.

The main evidence against Newton was repeated ballistics testing of a pistol she hid under a house that showed the gun was used to kill her family. Gunpowder residue was also found on her skirt.
Newton's lawyers disputed the gunpowder tests, saying the residue also could have come from common garden fertilizer. They also claimed police found another weapon in the abandoned house, clouding whether the one she hid was the murder weapon.
Prosecutors say there was only one gun.

The lawyers also blamed her former court-appointed attorney, saying he conducted no investigation, had little contact with her and had not subpoenaed any witnesses for the defense by the time her trial began.

Newton was the 13th person executed in Texas this year. She declined to make a final statement or a last meal request. The state has nine more executions scheduled so far for 2005, including six in November.

Texas Gov. Rick Perry, a Republican, granted Newton a rare reprieve two hours before her last execution date in December so more investigation could be conducted, but the evidence was determined to be sound and the courts declined to intervene.
The U.S. Supreme Court denied two late appeals on Wednesday, clearing the way for the lethal injection.

The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, Amnesty International and several local black leaders appealed for the Houston woman to be spared. The execution drew a larger-than-usual gathering of protesters outside the death house in Huntsville, Texas.

Newton is the fifth woman known to have been executed in Texas. A black slave named Lucy is thought to have been the first in 1858. Two female murderers, both white, have been put to death since Texas resumed executions in 1982 after a brief national ban on capital punishment imposed by the U.S. Supreme Court.

"For a long time I believed in the death penalty. But now I know that the system can't be trusted to be right. I've been wrongly accused, wrongly convicted," Newton told the Houston Chronicle in an interview.

A September 14, 2005 execution date has been set for Frances Newton, 40, who was sentenced to die for the 1987 shooting deaths of her husband, son and daughter. Prosecutors say she killed her family in order to collect $100,000 in insurance. Newton claims a drug dealer was the killer. Her defense attorney says he wants tests run on bloody carpet from the crime scene that may exonerate Newton.

Texas governor Rick Perry granted Newton a 120-day reprieve just a few hours before she was to have been executed on Dec. 1, 2004, in order to give her attorneys additional time to investigate questions about the evidence used to convict her, but their efforts failed to clear her.

From the Texas Attorney General's web site: On the evening of April 7, 1987, a Harris County sheriff’s deputy was dispatched to an apartment complex at 6126 West Mount Houston in response to a report of a possible shooting. The deputy found the bodies of the three victims inside the apartment. All three had been shot to death. Newton and her cousin were at the location when the deputy arrived. A friend of Newton's testified that earlier in the evening, Newton had taken a blue bag out of her car and put it in an abandoned house which belonged to her parents. A homicide detective later recovered the bag, which containing a .25 automatic pistol. A ballistics expert established that the pistol was the murder weapon. A forensics expert for the State established that nitrites were present on the skirt Newton wore on the day of the shootings. In the expert’s opinion, the nitrites came from gunpowder residue and were consistent with someone shooting a pistol in the lower front area of the skirt. Less than a month prior to the murders, Newton purchased a $50,000 life insurance policy on herself, another on her husband and a third on her daughter. Newton, the primary beneficiary on the latter two policies, made claims on the policies following the killings. Psychologist Charles Covert testified at Newton’s trial that based on a hypothetical scenario paralleling the facts in Newton’s case, there is a probability such a person would commit violent acts constituting a threat to society.

From December 2004: Virginia Louis does not want to see her daughter-in-law executed on Wednesday night, but she said there is no question in her mind that Frances Newton murdered her family in 1987. "I know she's guilty; there is no doubt in my mind," said Louis, a 61-year-old retired North Forest school bus driver and mother of the man Newton was convicted of killing.

Newton, 39, is scheduled for a lethal injection Wednesday for the April 1987 murders of her husband, Adrian Newton, and her two children, 7-year-old Alton and Farrah Elaine, 21 months. Frances Newton has repeatedly denied killing her family, saying a drug dealer named "Charlie" may have been responsible. She said her husband owed the man money. State and federal courts have dismissed Newton's claims, and for the family of Adrian Newton, the latest round of denials has been frustrating and painful. "My son didn't use drugs. Why does she keep saying this Charlie? Who is Charlie? There ain't no Charlie. She's Charlie," Louis said in an interview Monday.

The Texas Criminal Court of Appeals on Monday rejected Newton's 11th-hour appeal, and a similar effort remains pending before the U.S. Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals. Her petition for a 120-day reprieve is also pending before the state Board of Pardons and Paroles. Prosecutors said Newton killed her family to claim $100,000 in life insurance money. Evidence at the 1988 trial showed Newton forged her husband's signature on life insurance policies bought several months before the deaths.

Prosecutors said the murder weapon was a .25-caliber automatic pistol that was found in a blue bag in an abandoned house near her apartment. A witness saw Newton hide the bag in the house. Newton said she had found the unfamiliar gun at home and removed it as a safety precaution. Key evidence at Newton's trial included ballistics evidence linking the gun to the murder. Newton's attorneys have raised questions about the reliability of testing by the Houston Police Department crime lab, which have come under scrutiny in recent years for providing inaccurate evidence at criminal trials.

Newton has lodged numerous complaints about Ron Mock, her court-appointed defense attorney. Catherine Coulter, the attorney appointed to work with Mock, signed an affidavit last week agreeing with Newton's attorneys that she and Mock provided ineffective legal assistance. Prosecutors say state and federal appeals courts have thoroughly reviewed all of Newton's claims and have no doubt of Newton's guilt.

Several of Adrian Newton's cousins may attend the execution, but his immediate family will not. "We're all opposed to the death penalty," Tom Louis of Houston, Adrian Newton's brother, said. "In my opinion, if someone commits a crime, they should have to live with their mistakes."

Frances Elaine Newton, 40, was executed by lethal injection on 14 September 2005 in Huntsville, Texas for killing her husband and children for insurance money.

On 18 March 1987, Newton, then 21, took out $50,000 life insurance policies on her 23-year-old husband, Adrian, and her 21-month old daughter, Farrah. A policy already existed for her 7-year-old son, Alton. At the time, the Newtons were having marital problems. Although they lived together, they were both dating other people. Adrian's brother, Sterling Newton, was also living in their apartment.

On 7 April 1987, between 5:30 and 6:00 p.m., Sterling Newton came home. Frances asked him to leave for a while, to give her some time to talk with Adrian alone about their marital problems. Sterling left about an hour to an hour and a half later.
At about 6:45 p.m., Ramona Bell - Adrian's girlfriend - phoned Adrian. Bell and Adrian spoke for about fifteen minutes. Adrian told Bell that he was tired and was going to go to sleep, but not until Frances left, because he did not trust her.

Alphonse Harrison, a friend of Adrian's, had seen him earlier in the day, and the two made plans to get together that night. Harrison phoned the apartment between 7:00 and 7:15 p.m.. Frances answered the telephone. When he asked to speak with Adrian, Frances put Harrison on hold and left him there.

Between 7:00 and 7:30 p.m., Frances Newton arrived in an automobile at the residence of her cousin, Sondra Nelms. Newton asked Nelms to come over to her apartment for a visit. Before they left, Nelms watched Newton remove a blue bag from her car and put it inside the house next door to Nelms'. The house was abandonded and belonged to Newton's parents. They then went to Newton's apartment. Upon their arrival, they found Newton's husband and two children dead. Newton immediately called 911.

At 8:27 p.m., Harris County sherrif's deputy R. W. Ricks was dispatched to the apartment complex. Newton and Nelms were present when Ricks arrived. In Newton's apartment, Ricks found the bodies of Adrian, Alton, and Farrah Newton. Adrian was on a couch, shot in the head. The two children were in their beds, each shot in the chest. Deputy Ricks found no signs of forced entry or struggle.

Later that evening, Nelms told a homicide detective about the blue bag and took him to the abandoned house. Inside the house, he found a blue bag containing a .25-caliber semiautomatic pistol.
The gun was traced to one Michael Mouton, who told police that he had loaned it five or six months earlier to his cousin, Jeffrey Frelow. When detectives showed Frelow the gun, he recognized it and said that he kept in a chest of drawers in his bedroom. He also said that his girlfriend, Francis Newton, often did his laundry and had easy access to the gun.

On 21 April, Newton filed claims on the life insurance policies she had taken out a month earlier. She was arrested and charged with capital murder the next day.

A ballistics expert testified that the pistol found in the abandoned house was the murder weapon. He also testified that nitrate residue from gunpowder was found on the skirt that Newton was seen wearing on the day of the shootings. He testified that another possible source of nitrates was fertilizer. The state also presented testimony from Sterling Newton, Ramona Bell, Alphonse Harrison, Sondra Nelms, and Jeffrey Frelow.

Newton pleaded not guilty. At her trial, she testified that she found the gun in her home and took it out of the apartment as a safety measure. She said her family may have been killed by a drug dealer named Charlie, in the process of trying to collect a debt from her husband, a longtime drug addict.
Newton had a prior felony conviction for forgery. She received a sentence of 3 years' probation in December 1985. A previous employer also testified that Newton was fired from her job for stealing money.

In October 1988, a jury convicted Newton of capital murder, for killing more than one person in the same offense, and sentenced her to death. The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals affirmed the conviction and sentence in June 1992. All of her subsequent appeals in state and federal court were denied.

Newton maintained her innocence in a death-row interview. "I was so scared and confused. Not only was my family dead, but then they're charging me with murder," she said. She and her appeals lawyers claimed that she received ineffective assistance from her court-appointed trial lawyer, Ron Mock.
In a recent interview, Mock admitted that he was "burned out" at the time of Newton's trial and was not enthusiastic about her case. He said that the case was an uphill battle from the beginning. "I had nothing, really, to work with other than Frances' saying that she did not do it." Mock has been barred from accepting court-appointed capital murder cases since 2001.

Newton also said that the nitrate residue on her skirt was from fertilizer. In December 2004, on a previously scheduled execution date, Governor Rick Perry accepted the Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles' recommendation to grant Newton a 120-day stay of execution so that the skirt and the .25-caliber pistol could be tested again. The skirt, however, had been contaminated after the original test. Retesting on the pistol confirmed that it was the murder weapon.

In their most recent appeals, Newton's attorneys claimed that investigators actually seized two or more guns as evidence and that one of them - not the one in the blue bag hidden by Newton - was the murder weapon. A week before her execution, the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals rejected the multiple-gun theory as previously weighed and rejected. The U.S. Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals and the U.S. Supreme Court declined to take the case. The Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles declined to grant a reprieve.

"I know I did not murder my kids and my family," Newton told a reporter in an interview. "It's frustrating ... nobody's had to answer for that."
At her execution, when the warden asked if she had a final statement, Newton answered, "No" and shook her head. The lethal injection was then administered. She was pronounced dead at 6:17 p.m.

The state of Texas is scheduled to execute Frances Newton on Sept. 14th for the April 1987 murders of her husband, Adrian Newton and children Alton and Farah Newton in Harris County. If executed, Newton would be the first African-American woman Texas has put to death since the state resumed executions in 1982.

Newton's case embodies core problems with the death penalty in the United States in general and in Texas in particular. Her trial counsel was egregiously incompetent, she has a strong innocence claim and her conviction rested in large part on the results of ballistics testing conducted by the now-discredited Houston Police Department's crime lab.

Furthermore, Newton has been denied effective representation at nearly every stage of her appeal and consequently, her case has never been thoroughly or independently investigated. In fact, on the very day her trial began, her attorney, Ron Mock, admitted that he could not provide the name of a single witness with whom he had spoken. Mock is well known in Texas death penalty circles; he has had more clients sent to death row than any other lawyer. Many of his former clients have been executed and he is no longer assigned death penalty cases because of his astonishingly abysmal record as an attorney.

Newton, who was 21 at the time of the crime, took out a life insurance policy on her husband, herself, and her daughter less than a month before the crimes were committed. This action led many to believe she killed the victims in order to collect life insurance benefits. Newton also was reportedly having marital problems with her husband which the state further concluded to be evidence against her. However, as Newton's current attorneys have pointed out, there is a complex and overwhelming array of facts and circumstances that call into question the integrity and accuracy of her conviction.

First, Newton was convicted of killing her seven-year old son Alton Newton although he was not covered by a life insurance policy. The state was not able to provide a viable motive for his death. She also allegedly killed her 20-month old daughter for an additional $50,000 in insurance benefits. While a problematic marital situation may serve as motive for Newton's husband's murder, the killing of her two children is still speculative and largely unexplained by the state.

Second, the Houston Police Department's crime lab, which conducted ballistics testing on the weapon the state believes was used in the murder, is now widely regarded as extraordinarily unreliable. Without the crime lab's ballistics report, it is extremely doubtful that Newton's case would even have gone to trial, much less resulted in a capital murder conviction and death sentence.

Third, the state presented conflicting evidence regarding the timing of the murders and the likelihood Newton was home at the time they took place. Based on what the state presented, it is highly possible that another individual could have been at the residence at the time of the shooting. The state's evidence does not exclude this possibility in any way.

Fourth, the state has not investigated the possibility that another suspect or suspects may have been involved in the murders. Police were in possession of information that Adrian Newton was known to be a drug dealer and was in debt to a supplier. Despite this information, apparently police never investigated the possibility that the deaths were drug-related.

Fifth, the only other physical evidence in the case was the presence of nitrates found on the lower part of the dress Newton was wearing. However, while the state argued that the presence of nitrates indicated gun powder residue, other possible sources include fertilizer and cosmetics. It has been established that Newton's toddler was exposed to fertilizer earlier that day. Furthermore, Newton's hands were tested for gunpowder residue the evening of the murders; none was found, despite the fact that gunpowder residue cannot be washed away or quickly removed from skin after a gun has been fired.

Newton was given a prior death sentence in December of 2004, however, Newton's clemency team took the unusual step of not asking the Board of Pardons and Paroles to recommend clemency in Newton's case, but rather recommended to Gov. Perry a 120-day reprieve so that more investigation can be conducted. They claimed that the evidence in her case was lacking and that her prior representation was shoddy. Gov. Perry agreed to the 120-day reprieve on the day of her Dec. 1 execution date. However, little has changed regarding the facts of the case and the state has set yet another execution date.

Please write Gov. Perry and the Board of Pardons and Paroles and ask them to spare the life of Frances Newton

Local black leaders warned Tuesday of divine and political repercussions if condemned killer Frances Newton is executed tonight in Huntsville.
The warnings came during an emotional morning news conference at the Mickey Leland Federal Building downtown, during which U.S. Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee called on authorities to grant Newton a new trial. Jackson Lee, D-Houston, said she would also ask the nation's solicitor general to intervene in the case.

"The American nation values life," she said, "and Frances Newton deserves to have her life spared. ... It's not a handout that Newton should have her day in court again."
Jackson Lee likened the last-minute effort to save Newton to Texans who "through affection and love stood last at the Alamo" and declared that, "we're standing for the life of Texas."

Newton, 40, is to be executed at 6 p.m. for the 1987 murders of her husband, Adrian, 23, and the couple's 7-year-old son and 21-month-old daughter to gain insurance benefits.
She would be the third woman executed in Texas since executions were resumed in 1982 and the 13th killer executed this year. She also would be the first black woman put to death in Texas during that time.

Newton's chances to escape death by injection have narrowed to a last-minute appeal before the U.S. Supreme Court and an appeal to Gov. Rick Perry to grant a 30-day stay of execution. Last December, Perry granted Newton an execution-day stay that provided four months to retest evidence crucial to her case.
In the past week, petitions filed with the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals, 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals and the Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles have been rejected.

Texas Innocence Network attorneys David Dow and Jared Tyler, both University of Houston law professors, have centered their efforts to save Newton's life on claims that multiple pistols were seized as evidence the night of the killings.
Those weapons, they contend, could have been switched during ballistics testing, thereby wrongly indicating that the gun Newton hid in a vacant house after the shootings was the murder weapon. Newton has said she removed the pistol from her apartment and hid it to keep her husband from getting into a violent encounter with drug dealers.
Much of the evidence and testimony supporting their multiple-pistol theory, defense attorneys say, was developed after Newton's initial trial.

Assistant District Attorney Roe Wilson denies that more than one weapon was recovered. Tests on three occasions have identified the weapon Newton hid as the murder weapon, Wilson said.

On Tuesday, Jackson Lee called upon Perry to grant a stay so that issues related to the pistol and other matters can be sorted out. Last week, the Court of Criminal Appeals declined to consider the defense team's gun arguments, contending they already had been reviewed and discounted.
Nation of Islam Minister Robert Muhammad said Tuesday that he had completed a week of fasting and prayer for "God to move hearts and minds for justice."
Muhammad repeated the charge that Newton's first trial attorney, Ron Mock, provided inadequate counsel. Mock, whose career reached a recent low when the State Bar of Texas suspended him, failed to interview witnesses or perform other basic research in the case, appeals lawyers have claimed. The Court of Criminal Appeals, however, has determined Newton received adequate representation.
"Mock," Muhammad said, "has his own wing on death row."

Noting that Houston and Texas had generated international goodwill by welcoming tens of thousands of Hurricane Katrina evacuees, he added that the state could "ruin that in one swoop" with Newton's execution.
He warned, too, of divine retribution for what he deemed an unjust execution.
"I fear for the state for what God might do," he said. "If the hurricane had traveled just 2 degrees west, it could have been here."

Divine repercussions aside, Ovide Duncantell, director of the Black Heritage Society, predicted GOP overtures to blacks could fall flat if Perry, a Republican, fails to act.
"There will be more damage to the Republican Party," he said.
SHAPE director Deloyd Parker urged Perry to exercise caution in going ahead with Newton's execution.
"We believe she's innocent," he said. "But if you kill her tomorrow and you find out later that she is innocent, there's nothing you can do to undo it.
"Think about that, governor. Think about it."

"Woman set to die appeals to governor, top court," by Michael Graczyk. (The Associated Press Wed, Sep. 14, 2005)

HUNTSVILLE - The gun inside 7-year-old Alton Newton's blue knapsack was the focus of the last-minute legal maneuvering by appellate lawyers Tuesday trying to keep the slain boy's mother out of the Texas death chamber.

Frances Newton, 40, is scheduled to die today for the fatal shootings 18 years ago of Alton; her 21-month-old daughter, Farrah; and her husband, Adrian, 23.
Newton would be the 13th prisoner executed this year in Texas but only the third woman -- and the first black woman -- since the state resumed capital punishment in 1982.

Newton, who denies involvement in the killings, spent Tuesday visiting with relatives at the Mountain View prison outside Gatesville where the state's 11 condemned women are held.
Gatesville is about 140 miles northwest of Huntsville, where she will be taken if the execution proceeds.

Her attorneys awaited word from the Supreme Court, where they filed an appeal Monday after Texas courts, lower federal courts and the Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles rejected their arguments that Newton is not guilty.
Her attorneys also asserted that evidence used at her trial was improperly destroyed, that the gun linked to the slayings was not the only weapon recovered by police, and that she has not been a problem inmate, disputing trial evidence that she would be a continuing danger and deserved to die.

They also asked Gov. Rick Perry to invoke his authority to issue a one-time 30-day reprieve.
"It's distressing because there are so many questions in this case," Newton told The Associated Press in a recent interview. "And you'd hope, I hope, our court system would want to know the answers, other than just saying: 'Oh, we believe we're right in this.' "

Newton and a cousin found the three bodies on the evening of April 7, 1987. Her husband had been shot in the head, the two children in the chest.
Newton acknowledges hiding a .25-caliber handgun in Alton's knapsack at an abandoned house. Ballistics tests showed that it was the gun used in the slayings, but her attorneys argued that it wasn't the same weapon Newton left there, that police actually recovered a second or third weapon, and the guns were switched.

Newton said she found the gun in a drawer at home and hid it to keep her husband from getting into trouble. Adrian Newton had a drug history, and the couple was having marital problems. Both had been engaged in extramarital affairs.
Newton's cousin told police about the bag, which she saw Newton conceal.

Officers didn't record the serial number or any distinguishing features and when shown the weapon at Newton's trial said only that it "appeared similar," according to David Dow, one of Newton's appeals lawyers.
"When the state says Newton can be connected to a gun that has a particular serial number, that's just a flat-out lie," Dow said.

Prosecutors have termed the argument a smoke screen.
"The fact is, the gun that was the murder weapon was the gun she hid," said Roe Wilson, an assistant district attorney in Harris County. "It was bagged by police and tagged into evidence. There is a chain of custody. It was the only gun recovered."

In December, the parole board recommended a reprieve for Newton so new ballistics tests could be conducted on the gun, and Perry agreed about two hours before Newton could have been put to death. In March, new tests confirmed the earlier findings, and Harris County officials rescheduled her execution.

The circumstantial case also included evidence that the blue dress Newton was wearing carried possible gunpowder residue. She and her lawyers said the trace of nitrites came from fertilizer rubbed on her dress by her daughter, who stayed during the day with relatives who had a garden.
Defense lawyers were unable to conduct additional tests on the dress because it was contaminated when it was stored unprotected with other evidence and because the initial testing destroyed that part of the fabric.

The first black female to be executed in Texas will receive a lethal injection at 6 p.m. today.
Frances Elaine Newton, 40, has spent the last 18 years on death row. She was convicted of murdering her husband and two children in Houston in April 1987. Prosecutors claimed she killed them to collect on a $50,000 life-insurance policy.

The Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles voted Monday in a 7-0 decision declining Newton's requests that the board recommend for Gov. Rick Perry to commute her death sentence to life in prison. The vote came two days before Newton's scheduled execution.

Rissie Owens, presiding officer of the Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles, said in a statement that each board member gave full consideration to Newton's clemency request. The board considered all the information submitted from any interested parties including prosecutors, family members and the public. He said Newton's claims of innocence were not substantiated.

"I wish that the courts and the parole board would have been a little less anxious to assume that everything that the state is saying is true," David Dow, University of Houston law professor, said. "The state is saying things that are not true."

Gov. Rick Perry granted Newton a 120-day reprieve on Dec. 1, 2004 on her scheduled execution day to allow pardons and paroles officials further investigation regarding the alleged murder weapon, a .25-caliber pistol.
Dow has represented Newton since the summer of 2004. He said he did not believe Newton had access to the murder weapon, a fact he says the state has falsified.

The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People actively protested Newton's case at the governor's office, said Nelson Linder, head of the Austin chapter. He said he never once received any sort of response from state officials. NAACP protested the case on legal and moral grounds.
"Given the fact that the evidence was not clear, and she did not have an effective council makes you question due process," Linder said. "Race always plays a factor in any crime in America. It is very troubling."
Dow refused to comment on the issue of race in the sentencing.

Newton's mother, father and three siblings will be present at the execution as well as her former husband's two cousins.

According to Michelle Lyons, a spokeswoman for the Texas Department of Criminal Justice, Newton did not request a last meal, but one will be provided if she decides that afternoon to have one.
Dow said when he spoke to Newton Tuesday morning, she was hopeful. But her lawyer said he knew time was running out. Since Texas reinstated the death penalty in 1982, the state has executed 348 people. Newton will be the third female and first black female.

FRANCES NEWTON has been sitting on Texas’ death row for the past 17 years--for a crime that she very likely did not commit. But if Texas Gov. Rick Perry gets his way, Frances will be put to death on September 14--the first African American woman to be executed by the state of Texas since the Civil War.
Accused of shooting her husband Adrian and two children in 1987, Frances was railroaded onto death row on the flimsiest of evidence--by a system that couldn’t be bothered to look for the truth.

As the Austin Chronicle recently put it, “There is no incontrovertible evidence against Newton, and the paltry evidence that does exist has been completely compromised. Moreover, her story is one more in a long line of Texas death row cases in which the prosecutions were sloppy or dishonest, the defenses incompetent or negligent, and the constitutional guarantee of a fair trial was honored only in name.”

Police and prosecutors--in addition to Frances’ own incompetent trial attorney--ignored her claim that her family was murdered by a drug dealer that her husband owed money to. Despite the fact that an anonymous caller the day after the shooting gave a description and license plate number of a truck parked in the driveway of the Newton home on the night of the shooting, police never followed up on the lead. Instead, they claim Frances was after life insurance money--and made her their only suspect.

The physical evidence against Newton is full of holes. “[T]here wasn't any physical evidence at all on Frances Newton,” her new attorney David Dow told Democracy Now! “There wasn't anything at all on her clothes. There wasn't anything at all in her car. This is somebody who by the state's theory would have had to have killed three people with perfect marksmanship, and then completely clean the crime scene in such a way that investigating authorities could find no physical evidence tying her to the scene at all, in 20 minutes.”

Because of the numerous inconsistencies in the case, last December, Frances was granted a 120-day reprieve for the evidence to be re-examined. But recent testing on her skirt, which prosecutors claim places her as the shooter at the scene of the crime, couldn’t be done--because original forensic tests had not only destroyed the evidence, but Harris County officials had improperly stored the skirt by sealing it inside a bag, together with items of bloody clothing, making it worthless as evidence.

While police claim that ballistics tests confirm that a gun they say Frances had in her possession was used as the murder weapon, Dow says that police recovered at least two similar pistols during their investigation of the murders--a fact that police and prosecutors never revealed to Newton’s original lawyer.

During an interview earlier this year with a Dutch reporter, Assistant District Attorney Roe Wilson confirmed that “police recovered a gun from the apartment that belonged to the husband,” but added that, “[It] had not been fired, it had not been involved in the offense...It was simply a gun [Adrian] had there; so there is no second-gun theory.”
Wilson later claimed to have “misspoken,” saying that there was no second gun recovered. But at least two separate affidavits from police investigators allude to the recovery of a second gun--though the Harris County Sheriff’s Department has refused to turn over additional reports to Frances’ lawyers.

What’s more, in Harris County, where Frances Newton is from, the police crime lab is notorious for botching evidence in death penalty cases. Last year, Houston’s chief of police was forced to call for the state to delay all executions in cases where evidence was used that had been processed at the Harris County crime lab--after hundreds of previously missing boxes of evidence were found that pertained to more than 8,000 criminal cases. More recently, according to Human Rights Watch, problems at the crime lab have included missing evidence, defective DNA analysis and inaccurate ballistic analysis.

As Dow recently asked, “Is it plausible to think that the Houston Police Department ballistics lab mixed up the weapons? In view of what we know now--from faulty ballistics evidence in other cases, to dozens of mistakes in DNA analysis, to scores of boxes of lost or missing evidence--I would think that only the most stubborn, naive or disingenuous prosecutor would say with any confidence that Newton is guilty.”

Like many other inmates on death row, Frances Newton’s defense was not just inadequate, but wholly incompetent. She was originally “defended” by Ron Mock, a lawyer so outrageously inept that he was later barred from taking capital cases in the state of Texas--and has since been suspended from practicing law until the year 2007. “Death Row Mock,” as he was nicknamed--because he never won an acquittal in a capital case, and had at least 16 clients sentenced to death--failed to call any witnesses or do any investigation in Frances’ case.
When Frances and her parents begged the trial judge to let her change attorneys, the judge agreed--but refused to grant a continuance, leaving he with no choice but to stick with Mock.

American Bar Association President Michael Greco has also written to Gov. Rick Perry and the Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles to request that Frances’ execution be stayed, citing Mock’s gross incompetence as just one of the compelling reasons. But over the weekend, the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals rejected Frances’ latest motion, saying that the evidence of a second gun was not “new.” The court also has rejected claims that Frances received inadequate representation in her first trial, and that the prosecution had destroyed and contaminated crucial evidence

Speaking out for Frances as her execution date approached were Tom and Virginia Louis, the parents of Frances’ murdered husband Adrian. “We do not wish to suffer the loss of another family member,” they wrote to the Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles.

Frances’ mother, Jewel Nelms, was recently admitted to the hospital when the stress of her daughter’s approaching execution put her health in jeopardy “I would ask the Governor and the Board of Pardons and Paroles to look at the facts in the case and make a true and fair judgment--like they would want someone to do if it was their child,” Jewel recently told Campaign to End the Death Penalty activist Lily Hughes.

Despite her poor health, Jewel pledged to continue fighting for Frances as the execution date loomed. “I’m hoping this is the evidence that’s going to get us back in the courts, since we have enough evidence now to know that there are things that are hidden that should have been brought out in the beginning,” she said. “I know for a fact that if the jury had known about a second gun, the verdict wouldn’t have come out like it did...

“Everybody is really disappointed in our system here in Houston, and knowing that they’ve hidden things for all these years is really kind of scary. Because I don’t think they just singled out Frances. I would like very much to ask: why did they feel the need to hide things? That says a lot about our system...It makes me think maybe they’ve been killing people that they could have saved, because they were wrongfully convicted--and that is what they are trying to do to my daughter.”

Prior Prison Record - Newton was given a concurrent 3-year sentence stemming from a probated forgery conviction in February 1986. Newton's probation was revoked upon her capital murder conviction.

Details of the Crime: Newton was convicted in the April 1987 slaying of her husband and children for insurance money. Killed were her husband, Adrian, 23, her son, Alton, 7, and daughter, Farrah, 21 months. All were shot to death with a .25 caliber pistol that belonged to Newton's boyfriend. Newton and her husband had separated about a month prior to the killings.

Motive: In March 1987, Newton took out $50,000 life insurance policies on Adrian, Farrah and herself. A policy already existed on Alton's life. Newton admitted taking a gun with her to her husband's apartment on the night of the killings, but she said she took it for protection and that her family members were alive when she left.

Newton filed insurance claims on April 21, 1987, and was arrested and charged with capital murder the next day.

Unless the Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles and Gov. Rick Perry act to stop it, on Sept. 14 Frances Newton will become only the third woman executed by the state of Texas since 1982, and the first black woman executed since the Civil War.

Unique in that historical sense, in other ways the Frances Newton case is painfully unexceptional. For there is no incontrovertible evidence against Newton, and the paltry evidence that does exist has been completely compromised. Moreover, her story is one more in a long line of Texas death row cases in which the prosecutions were sloppy or dishonest, the defenses incompetent or negligent, and the constitutional guarantee of a fair trial was honored only in name.

As Harris Co. prosecutors tell the story, the now 40-year-old Newton is a cold-blooded killer who murdered her husband and two young children inside the family's apartment outside Houston on April 7, 1987, by shooting each of them, execution-style, in order to collect life insurance. Newton had the opportunity, they argued during her 1988 trial, and a motive – a troubled relationship with her husband, Adrian, and the promise of $100,000 in insurance money from policies she'd recently taken out on his life and on the life of their 21-month-old daughter Farrah. And she had the means, they say: a .25-caliber Raven Arms pistol she had allegedly stolen from a boyfriend's house.

To the state, it is a simple, open-and-shut case, which requires no further review. "Her case has been reviewed by every possible court," Harris Co. Assistant District Attorney Roe Wilson told the Los Angeles Times in November. "She killed her two children and her husband. There is very, very strong evidence of that."

Yet despite Wilson's insistence, Newton's case isn't simple at all – and such "evidence" as there is, is far from strong. "The State's theory is simple, and it is superficially compelling," attorney David Dow, head of the Texas Innocence Network at the University of Houston Law Center, argued in Newton's clemency petition, currently pending before the Board of Pardons and Paroles. "As we will see, however, appearances can be misleading."

From the beginning, Frances Newton has maintained her innocence. She has also offered a plausible alternative theory of the crime – a theory that neither police, prosecutors, nor Newton's own trial attorney, the infamous and now suspended Ronald Mock, have ever investigated. Newton and her defenders contend that Adrian, Farrah, and 7-year-old Alton were likely murdered by someone connected to a drug dealer to whom Adrian owed $1,500. The alternative theory has much to say for it – among other things, it explains the lack of physical evidence connecting Newton to the bloody murders.

Lingering questions about the physical evidence against Newton prompted the Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles to recommend, and Gov. Rick Perry to grant, a 120-day reprieve for Newton on Dec. 1, 2004 – the day she was last scheduled for execution. Although Perry said he saw no "evidence of innocence" – legally, an oxymoron – he granted the four-month stay to allow for retesting of evidence contested by Newton's defense, including nitrite residue on the hem of her skirt and gun ballistics evidence.

But testing on the skirt proved impossible, because the 1987 tests had destroyed the nitrite particles, and Harris Co. court officials had stored the skirt by sealing it inside a bag together with items of the victims' bloody clothing – thereby rendering it worthless as evidence. The second round of ballistics testing, on the other hand, supposedly confirmed a match between the gun prosecutors say Newton used and the bullets that killed her family. However, that match may be fundamentally undermined – because there is no certain connection between the gun and Newton. According to Dow, it appears that police actually recovered at least two, and perhaps three, .25-caliber Raven Arms pistols during their investigation of the murders – conflicting evidence that neither the police nor the prosecutors ever revealed to Newton's defense. Dow argues that it is virtually impossible to know whether prosecutors have been truthful in claiming that the gun that Newton admits to hiding on April 7, 1987, was the murder weapon. "How many firearms were recovered and investigated in this case and who owned them?" Dow asks in a supplemental petition filed with the BPP on Aug. 25. "How many records have been withheld from Newton's attorneys throughout this case?"

In short, there is now even more doubt about Newton's guilt than there was when she was granted the stay – distressing Newton's many defenders, among them Adrian's parents, two former prison officials, and at least one of the jurors who heard Newton's case. "We never wanted to see Frances get executed," Adrian's parents Tom and Virginia Louis wrote to the BPP on Aug. 25. "When the trial occurred, nobody from the [DA's] Office ever asked ... our opinion. We were willing to testify on Frances' behalf, but Frances' defense lawyer never approached us," they continued. "We do not wish to suffer the loss of another family member."

A Bloody Crime

In the months before the murders, Frances and Adrian Newton were having marital problems. They were each involved in extramarital relationships, and Adrian was using drugs. In an Aug. 30 Gatesville prison interview, Newton told me that in addition to smoking marijuana, Adrian had developed a cocaine habit. "He had told me he was using cocaine, but I'd never seen that, but I saw the effects of it," she recalled. "He was home later, he was irritable, less responsible."

But she and Adrian had been together since she was a girl, and she was determined to work things out. That was on her mind on the afternoon of April 7, 1987, when she and Adrian sat down and talked. "We had decided that we were going to get through this together," she said. Adrian insisted that he wasn't using anymore, so when they were done talking and Adrian went into the living room "to watch TV ... I decided to be nosy and see if he was being honest," she recalled. Quietly, she opened the cabinet where he kept his stash.

"That's when I found the gun," she said. Newton said she immediately recalled a conversation she'd heard earlier that day, between Adrian and his brother, Sterling, who'd been staying with the family. "I couldn't hear real close, but it sounded like they'd been in some trouble," she said. "I thought I'd better take [the gun] out of there because I didn't want it to be in the house ... I didn't want him to get into any trouble." She removed the gun, placed it in a duffel bag and took it with her when she left the apartment around 6pm to run some errands, she says.
Newton says it was the last time she saw her family alive.

At 7pm, after a couple of errands, Newton arrived at her cousin Sondra Nelms' house, where the two chatted and decided to return to Newton's apartment. As Newton backed out of the drive, she saw the duffel on the back seat and realized she needed to hide it. With Nelms watching, Newton retrieved the bag and walked next door into a burned and abandoned house owned by her parents, and there (as both women later confirmed), she left the bag.

The women arrived at the apartment around 8pm, and didn't immediately realize that anything was wrong. Newton thought Adrian was napping – until she saw the blood. "As Frances walked around the couch and saw his upper torso, she immediately screamed and bolted to the children's bedroom," Nelms said in an affidavit. "Frances began to frantically scream uncontrollably. I could not calm her down enough to elicit the apartment's address."

Newton says she was shocked and dazed, but gave police as much information as possible – including the fact that she'd just removed a gun from the house. She told police about Adrian's drug habit, and that he owed some money to a dealer – which Adrian's brother, Terrence, corroborated, telling police he knew where the dealer lived. Police never pursued the lead. "To your knowledge, was the alleged drug dealer ever interviewed by anyone in connection with this case?" Newton's attorney asked Sheriff's Officer Frank Pratt at trial. "No," Pratt replied.

A bullet remained lodged in Adrian's head, meaning that the blood and brain matter would have blown back onto the gun and shooter – confirmed by a trail of blood found in the hallway. Police found no trace of residual nitrites (gunshot residue) on Newton's hands, nor on the long sleeves of the sweater she was wearing. They collected the clothing she'd worn that day. There was no blood, nor any trace of blood, on any of the items.

Which Gun?

The next day, April 8, according to trial records, police supposedly confirmed that the gun they had retrieved from Newton's duffel bag in the abandoned building – at her direction – matched the murder bullets. Yet Newton was not arrested until more than two weeks later. Newton says that Harris Co. Sheriff's Sgt. J.J. Freeze told her that police had actually recovered two guns; in a sworn affidavit, Newton's father Bee Henry Nelms says Freeze told him the same thing and added that Newton would "eventually be released." Nonetheless, Newton was arrested two weeks later – after she filed a claim on Adrian and Farrah's life insurance policies – and charged with the capital murder of her 21-month-old daughter.

The state's primary evidence against her was elementary: Newton had filed for insurance benefits, and the Department of Public Safety forensic technicians had detected nitrite traces near the hem of Newton's long skirt – although they couldn't say with certainty that the nitrites were not her father's garden fertilizer transferred earlier that day from the hands of her toddler daughter. For physical evidence, the state relied primarily on the supposed ballistics match to the gun Newton had hidden.

Yet in court Freeze was somewhat vague: "I believe we talked about two pistols," he testified. "I know of one for sure, and there was mention of a second one that Ms. Newton had purchased earlier."

There are serious questions about the prosecutors' timeline, which would have required Newton somehow to murder her family, clean herself of any and all blood traces and gunshot residue, and drive to her cousin's house – all in less than 30 minutes. And since her 1988 conviction, the question of a second gun has haunted Newton's case. The ballistics evidence was increasingly suspect in any case because of the recent history of the Houston PD crime lab, which has been repeatedly charged with incompetent, shoddy work, resulting in a number of exonerations and the wholesale discrediting of the lab, which remains under investigation. The lab's clouded reputation was one factor that prompted Gov. Perry to accept the BPP's recommendation to grant Newton a reprieve last winter.

Although subsequent testing supposedly confirmed the ballistics match, the search for the second gun continued. And in June, Dow argued in Newton's clemency petition, the truth finally began to leak out, and from the most unlikely place: the Harris Co. District Attorney's Office. During a brief videotaped interview with a Dutch reporter, Assistant DA Roe Wilson inadvertently confirmed the existence of a second gun. "Police recovered a gun from the apartment that belonged to the husband," Wilson acknowledged. "[It] had not been fired, it had not been involved in the offense, " she continued. "It was simply a gun [Adrian] had there; so there is no second-gun theory."

Wilson and her boss, DA Chuck Rosenthal, quickly retracted her admission. Wilson told the Houston Chronicle that she'd simply "misspoken," and Rosenthal accused Dow of fabricating the idea of a second gun "out of whole cloth." "I'm very clear," Rosenthal told The New York Times. "One gun was recovered in the case." On Aug. 24, the Court of Criminal Appeals agreed, dismissing Newton's most recent appeal. "The evidence in this case was more than sufficient to establish [Newton's] guilt," Judge Cathy Cochran wrote. "The various details that [Newton] suggests her trial counsel should have investigated in greater detail do not detract ... from the single crucial piece of evidence that concerns her: she disposed of the murder weapon immediately after the killing."

Dow and his University of Houston law students persisted, and late last month may have succeeded. In August, Harris Co. investigators provided testimony that police may have recovered at least two identical .25-caliber Raven Arms pistols. In separate affidavits, two police investigators recall tracing firearms recovered in connection with the murders. Officer Frank Pratt told one of Dow's students that he was assigned a gun found in the abandoned house, which he traced to a purchase by Newton's boyfriend's cousin at a local Montgomery Ward. He also discovered, he told student Frances Zeon, that the purchaser had also bought a "second, identical gun"; but he didn't follow up on the second gun, because "he felt there was no need to do so." Pratt said he'd written up a report on the gun – a report Newton's attorneys have never seen.

However, Newton's attorneys do have a police report written by Detective M. Parinello, who reported he had traced yet another firearm recovered in connection with the case to a purchase from Rebel Distributors in Humble, Texas, which he said also ended up with Newton's boyfriend. "The question arises: what recovered firearm was ... Pratt investigating?" asks the clemency petition. "Counsel does not have access to the Harris Co. Sheriff's Department's records in this case. A request made directly to that institution for all records in connection to its investigation of this offense was rejected."

From all this conflicting yet incomplete gun evidence, it seems reasonable to surmise that there is no way to know which gun was in fact the murder weapon, or which gun was delivered for ballistics tests in 1987 or this year. Since the prosecution relied so heavily on a weapon that Newton herself had delivered to them, the new evidence discovered by her attorneys completely undermines her conviction.

At press time, Harris Co. Sheriff's Office spokesman Lt. John Martin was not able to reach Parinello or Pratt for comment but said that a captain who worked the Newton case had said there was only one gun recovered during the investigation. Harris Co. DA Chuck Rosenthal reiterated that, "as far as I know" there was only one gun recovered in the case. However, he said that even if investigators had recovered multiple firearms, and even if each were the same brand and caliber, the fact remains that the weapon investigators recovered from the abandoned house, which was immediately "tagged" and "tested," matched the bullets recovered from the victims. "Let's say, for conjecture's sake, that you ran down 50 or 100 guns, all associated with the case," he said. "The fact [is] that only one fired the bullets and that we know where that gun came from."

Criminal Defense

As in many Texas capital cases, a large part of the problem with Newton's appeals is that her court-appointed trial attorney, Ron Mock, never actually investigated her case. If he had, perhaps he would've followed up the drug dealer lead or Freeze's reported comments about a second gun. Newton and her parents implored the trial judge to allow her to change attorneys, and Mock admitted to the judge that he hadn't talked to any prosecution witnesses, nor had he subpoenaed any defense witness. The judge granted the motion to remove Mock but he declined a continuance, leaving Newton little choice but to go to trial with Mock. "It was stunning," she told me. "[Mock gets on the stand and] says, 'I don't know anything,' and for the judge to just dismiss it ... it was stunning." (Mock has since been brought before the State Bar's disciplinary board at least five times on various charges of professional misconduct, for which he has been fined and sometimes suspended; he is currently suspended from practicing law until late 2007.)

The Harris Co. prosecutors' defense of the conviction has also worn thin, especially given Roe Wilson's supposed "misstatement" about the second gun. To Newton's mother, Jewel Nelms, Wilson's admission is no mistake. "I've known all the time that there was a second gun," she told Houston's KPFT radio last month. "So I want to say again, to Roe Wilson, I thank you ... very much for letting us know, indeed, that there's somebody down there that knows about the second gun and was willing to talk about it – even though I know it wasn't her intention to do it."

Newton's clemency petition is still pending before the Board of Pardons and Paroles. On Monday, Sept. 6, her attorneys filed a petition with the state district court in Houston and the Court of Criminal Appeals, claiming that the state's failure to disclose evidence of a second gun violated her right to due process. At press time, Gov. Perry's office had received more than 4,000 letters, faxes, e-mails, and postcards regarding Newton's impending execution – most imploring Perry to commute her death sentence to life in prison. Letters about Newton's bid should be addressed to: The Honorable Rick Perry, Office of the Governor, PO Box 12428, Austin, 78711-2428; and to Chairwoman Rissie Owens, Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles, Executive Clemency Unit, PO Box 13401, Austin, 78711.

Frances Elaine Newton could soon be the first African American woman executed in modern Texas history despite resounding questions of whether she is guilty and whether she received a fair trial.

Almost half of those on Texas' death row are African American, yet they are only 12 per cent of the population. Newton is from Harris County, where the Houston Police Crime Lab has botched so many cases that even the police chief and a state senator have asked the governor to halt executions from Harris County.

What to DO?
New actions planned, new materials available.
1. Get and mail a postcard to Governor Rick Perry; distribute to people you know.
2. See Coming Events for more to do.
3. Be creative! Help in your own way. Call or write the media. Ask questions in public. Bring it up at church.
AUDIO & VIDEO FILES ONLINE

SCHEDULED EXECUTION: SEPTEMBER 14

*** URGENT ***
LESS THAN 1 DAY
TO SAVE FRANCES

NOW: e-mail multiple selected elected officials at ONCE !!!
or

Download, sign, circulate and FAX the new
PETITION TO STOP THE EXECUTION!
or

Send mail in old-fashioned ways

PRAYERS FOR FRANCES, September 14, 2005 at the Astrodome, Kirby and McNee, 12:30-2:00 pm

The president of the AMERICAN BAR ASSOCIATION has written a letter to Texas officials calling for a STAY of execution! (Read the Letter) (RTF document) No more victims. PLEASE!

Letter to the Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles from the parents of Adrian, grandparents of Alton and Farrah: "Frances is part of our family. "

MILLER, Judge.
Appellant was convicted of capital murder. See V.T.C.A., Penal Code, Section 19.03(a)(6). After the jury made an affirmative finding on both of the special issues submitted under Article 37.071(b)(1) and (2), V.A.C.C.P., the trial court imposed the penalty of death. This case is before us on direct appeal. Article 37.071(h), V.A.C.C.P.

Because appellant contests the sufficiency of evidence to sustain her conviction, we will review the facts of her case. On the evening of April 7, 1987 at 8:27 p.m., Deputy R.W. Ricks was dispatched to an apartment complex at 6126 West Mount Houston in response to a possible shooting. Appellant was at the location, along with her cousin, Sondra Nelms. Lying on a couch in appellant's apartment, Ricks found the body of Adrian Newton, appellant's husband, with a bullet wound to the head, and the bodies of Alton Newton, seven years old, and Farrah Newton, twenty-one months old, appellant's children, both of whom had died from gunshot wounds to the chest. There were no signs of forced entry into the apartment, nor any signs of a struggle.

Earlier the same evening, between 7:00 and 7:30 p.m., appellant arrived in an automobile at Sondra Nelms' residence at 6524 Sealy. Appellant asked Sondra to come over to appellant's apartment to visit. Before leaving Sondra's house, appellant took a blue bag out of her car and put it in an abandoned house which belonged to her parents, located next door at 6520 Sealy. Upon arrival at appellant's apartment, they found appellant's husband and two children dead.
Later that evening, homicide detective Michael Talton spoke with Nelms, who took him to the house at 6520 Sealy. Inside he found a blue bag containing a blue steel Raven Arms .25 automatic, which he turned over to a crime scene officer.

The gun's owner, Michael Mouton, had loaned the gun to his cousin, Jeffrey Frelow, five or six months prior to the murders. Jeffrey Frelow had known appellant since junior high school, and began to have a sexual relationship with her approximately one to two months prior to the murders. Frelow identified the gun and indicated that he kept it in a chest of drawers in his master bedroom. Because she often did Frelow's laundry, appellant had access to the drawers and to the gun.

On April 8, 1987, appellant accompanied Detective Michael Parinello during a search of her apartment, where she pointed out the clothing she wore the day of the murders. Parinello collected the clothing and delivered it to the Department of Public Safety Crime Laboratory to test for possible gunpowder residue.
Sterling Duane Newton, the brother of the deceased Adrian Newton, was also living at the apartment where the murders occurred, and was present on the evening of April 7, 1987. When Sterling arrived at the apartment at 5:30 or 6:00, appellant was there. Appellant requested that Sterling leave the apartment to give her some time alone with Adrian to talk over their marital problems. Sterling remained at the apartment for approximately an hour to an hour and a half before leaving.

Ramona Bell, a long time acquaintance of the deceased, Adrian Newton, had been dating him for some time prior to April 7, 1987. Bell knew that appellant and Adrian were on bad terms. Bell testified that on April 7, 1987, she called Adrian from work at approximately 6:45 p.m., and appellant answered the telephone. Bell then spoke to Adrian for about fifteen minutes. During the telephone conversation Adrian told Bell that he was tired and was going to go to sleep, but not until appellant left, because he did not trust appellant.

Alphonse Harrison, a friend of Adrian Newton, had seen him earlier in the day on April 7, 1987, and the two made plans to get together that night. Harrison testified that he called Adrian between 7:00 and 7:15 that evening, and appellant answered the telephone. Harrison never got to talk to Adrian because appellant put him on hold and left him holding for possibly 45 minutes. Harrison hung up but continued to call back and finally got an answer around 9:00 p.m., when appellant's cousin answered the telephone and told him that Adrian had been shot.

Claudia Chapman was working for a State Farm Insurance agent when she met appellant in September 1986. Appellant came in for automobile insurance, and Chapman talked to her about purchasing life insurance. On March 18, 1987, appellant purchased a fifty thousand dollar life insurance policy on herself, another on her husband, Adrian, and a third on her daughter, Farrah. According to the insurance applications, appellant was the primary beneficiary on the latter two policies, which became effective immediately. Both appellant and her mother had made claims on the policies as of the time of the trial of this cause.
A ballistics expert established that the pistol recovered by Officer Talton was the murder weapon. A forensics expert for the State established that nitrites were present on appellant's skirt. In the expert's opinion, the nitrites came from gunpowder residue, and were consistent with someone shooting a pistol in the lower front area of the skirt. He testified that another possible source of nitrites would be fertilizer. A forensic expert for appellant confirmed that nitrites could come from fertilizer.

In her twenty-ninth point of error appellant contends that the evidence is insufficient to sustain her conviction. When reviewing the record for evidentiary sufficiency our standard is set out in Jackson v. Virginia, 443 U.S. 307, 99 S.Ct. 2781, 61 L.Ed.2d 560 (1979): "The relevant question is whether after viewing the evidence in the light most favorable to the [verdict], any rational trier of fact could have found the essential elements of the crime beyond a reasonable doubt." Jackson, 443 U.S. at 319, 99 S.Ct. at 2789, 61 L.Ed.2d at 573. This standard applies to direct as well as circumstantial evidence cases. Butler v. State, 769 S.W.2d 234, 238 (Tex.Cr.App.1989). However, in applying the Jackson standard to circumstantial evidence cases decided prior to our decision in Geesa v. State, 820 S.W.2d 154 (Tex.Cr.App.1991) [FN1] we have adopted as a tool for analysis of circumstantial evidence case the following "analytical construct": that the evidence must exclude every other outstanding reasonable hypothesis other than the guilt of the accused. Carlsen v. State, 654 S.W.2d 444, 449 (Tex.Cr.App.1983), overruled in part by Geesa, see note 1, infra.

Appellant maintains that the evidence against her is circumstantial and that it does not rule out the reasonable hypothesis that someone other than appellant committed the murders of her husband and children. At trial, appellant testified that on the day of the murders she picked up her children after work and came home at around 4:30 p.m. Her husband's brother, Sterling, came in at 5:00 p.m. She testified that she and her husband decided to reconcile their differences. She would stop seeing Jeffrey Frelow and he was to "stop doing whatever he was doing[.]" [FN2] Then they made love while the children played in the bedroom. Later she changed out of the clothes that were subsequently determined to contain traces of nitrites. She left the apartment about 6:00 p.m. in order to pay her automobile insurance. Before leaving she removed the handgun, that was ultimately determined to be the murder weapon, from its location in a kitchen cabinet, and she placed it in her purse. She denied ever having seen the gun before. She denied knowing that Frelow owned a handgun. Appellant testified that she took the gun because she had overheard a conversation between her husband, Adrian, and Sterling in which mention was made of some trouble involving Adrian. Appellant maintains that she was trying to prevent the trouble. She drove to the place where she thought the insurance company was located, but it had moved. Then, around 7:00 p.m., she went to her cousin Sondra's house. She stayed away from her apartment because she not only wanted to talk to Sondra but also she wanted to leave Adrian and Sterling alone so that they could talk. Appellant testified that she and Sondra subsequently went back to the apartment; however, prior to leaving Sondra's residence, appellant took the gun, which she had put in a knapsack, and placed it in the abandoned house next door. She testified that she did this because, if her family had seen the gun, they would have thought that Adrian was in some kind of trouble. Upon arriving home she noticed that the front door was slightly ajar. A short time later she discovered the bodies of her husband and children.

On cross-examination, appellant testified that she was aware that her husband had "cheated" on her during her marriage and that this fact embarrassed her. After discovering her husband with another woman earlier in the year, she may have said that if she caught him "running around" on her again she would kill him. She admitted that she was aware, prior to the killings, that her insurance company had moved to another location. She acknowledged that both Alphonse Harrison and Ramona Bell testified that they had called her residence around 7:00 to 7:30 p.m. and that she had answered the telephone, although she denied that Harrison was correct about the time or that she had ever talked to Bell. She denied knowing Bell, although she had heard that Bell and her husband were having a relationship.
Appellant suggests that "the window of opportunity [to commit the murders] was quite wide" [FN3] and, therefore, the evidence supports a reasonable hypothesis that someone other than appellant is the guilty party. We disagree. It is evident, when we look at the record in the light most favorable to the verdict, that the jury did not find appellant's hypothesis at all reasonable. The evidence shows that the murders were committed sometime between approximately 7:00 p.m. and 8:27 p.m. on April 7, 1987. Appellant was at the scene of the crime at around 7:00 p.m. Appellant was in possession of the murder weapon and attempted to hide it. Gunshot residue was found on appellant's clothes. [FN4] Appellant and her deceased husband were having marital problems, and, just a few weeks prior to the murders, she had taken out life insurance policies on her husband and one of her children. Appellant admitted that she may have said she would kill her husband if she once more caught him "running around." Appellant's alibi evidence is contradicted by two State's witnesses whom the jury evidently chose to believe. Clearly, on the strength of these facts, a rational trier of fact could conclude that the only reasonable hypothesis was that appellant committed all three murders. Appellant's twenty-ninth point of error is overruled.

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Point of error twenty-four concerns an argument by the State to the jury during the punishment phase. Dr. Charles Covert testified in response to a hypothetical that, in his opinion, appellant would constitute a continuing threat to society because of the probability that she would commit future acts of violence. The prosecutor asked Dr. Covert on what he based his opinion, and appellant's counsel objected that the question called for speculation and conclusion. The court did not rule on the objection, and the prosecutor did not pursue the line of questioning. During appellant's closing argument counsel told the jury that, with respect to Covert's opinion, the doctor knew what his answer would be before he was asked the hypothetical question because "his mind was made up." Appellant argued that the jury should give the doctor no credibility. In reply, the State argued that appellant had the opportunity to attack Covert's credibility while he was on the stand but chose not to do so because the doctor's forensic experience would have made him immune to an attack on credibility. The State pointed out that they had offered to put in evidence the doctor's basis for his opinion. The prosecutor then said, "Mr. Mock's response: I object. He didn't want you to know what the doctor based it on. He didn't touch that evidence." Appellant objected but was overruled. Appellant argues that the State was going outside the record and the trial court should have sustained her objection. We disagree. The record clearly demonstrates that appellant's attack on Covert's credibility put in issue the basis for the doctor's opinion and invited the State's response. The State was properly allowed to reply to counsel's argument. Point of error twenty-four is overruled.

In point of error twenty-five, appellant contends that the trial court erred by overruling her objection to another of the State's arguments to the jury during the punishment phase of trial. The State, in arguing that the defendant was a future danger to society, said, "Then she [appellant] goes to her little boy. It's reasonable to infer from the evidence that he heard the shot [that killed Adrian Newton]. 'Mama, what is going on?' That is, just lay on the bed there, son. 'Mama, what is going on?' " Appellant's counsel objected that this was outside the record. The objection was overruled. Appellant now argues that the trial court erred, but the State replies that the remarks are a reasonable inference from the evidence. We agree with the State. It is well settled that "counsel may draw from the facts in evidence all inferences that are reasonable, fair, and legitimate." Allridge v. State, 762 S.W.2d 146, 156 (Tex.Cr.App.1988), cert. denied, 489 U.S. 1040, 109 S.Ct. 1176, 103 L.Ed.2d 238 (1989). It would be a fair inference that appellant shot her husband while he slept, and that her seven year old son heard the shot and wondered what was happening. We note that counsel specifically informed the jury that his argument was in the nature of a reasonable inference; thus, there was no danger that the prosecutor's comments could have been interpreted by the jury as a statement of evidence in the record. Appellant's twenty-fifth point of error is overruled.

* * *

Newton v. Dretke, 371 Fed.Appx. 250 (5th Cir. 2004) (Habeas).

Background: Petitioner, convicted in state court of capital murder and sentenced to death, 1992 WL 175742, sought federal habeas relief. The United States District Court for the Southern District of Texas, Kenneth M. Hoyt, J., denied petition. Petitioner moved for certificate of appealability.

Holdings: The Court of Appeals, W. Eugene Davis, Circuit Judge, held that:
(1) trial court's refusal to continue trial to allow petitioner's counsel of choice to prepare did not violate due process, and
(2) special issues on deliberateness and future dangerousness submitted to jury during penalty phase, under Texas law, did not violate Penry.
Certificate of appealability denied.

W. EUGENE DAVIS, Circuit Judge:
Petitioner Frances Elaine Newton was convicted of capital murder in Texas and sentenced to death. She now seeks a certificate of appealability from the district court's denial of habeas corpus relief. Because Newton has failed to make a substantial showing of a denial of a constitutional right, we deny her application for COA.

Newton was convicted and sentenced to death in October 1988 for the capital offense of murdering her young daughter in the same criminal transaction as the murders of her husband and young son. On direct appeal, the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals affirmed the conviction and sentence. Newton v. State, No. 70,770, 1992 WL 175742 (Tex.Crim.App. June 17, 1992)(unpublished opinion). The Supreme Court denied Newton's petition for writ of certiorari, Newton v. Texas, 509 U.S. 926, 113 S.Ct. 3045, 125 L.Ed.2d 730 (1993), and denied rehearing, Newton v. Texas, 509 U.S. 945, 114 S.Ct. 26, 125 L.Ed.2d 776 (1993). Newton filed a state application for writ of habeas corpus. The trial court entered findings of fact and conclusions of law recommending denial of relief. The Court of Criminal Appeals adopted the trial court's findings and denied relief. Ex Parte Newton, Application No. 47,025-01 (Tex.Crim.App.Dec.6, 2000).
Newton filed her federal habeas petition in December 2001, raising five claims for relief. In August 2003, the district court granted the Director's motion for summary judgment, denying habeas relief and denying a COA. Newton timely appealed. Newton now seeks a COA from this court.

The Court of Criminal Appeals summarized the relevant facts of the crime in its opinion on direct appeal:
On the evening of April 7, 1987 at 8:27 p.m., Deputy R.W. Ricks was dispatched to an apartment complex at 6126 West Mount Houston in response to a possible shooting. Appellant was at the location, along with her cousin, Sondra Nelms. Lying on a couch in appellant's apartment, Ricks found the body of Adrian Newton, appellant's husband, with a bullet wound to the head, and the bodies of Alton Newton, seven years old, and Farrah Newton, twenty-one months old, appellant's children, both of whom had died from gunshot wounds to the chest. There were no signs of forced entry into the apartment, nor any signs of a struggle.
Earlier the same evening, between 7:00 and 7:30 p.m., appellant arrived in an automobile at Sondra Nelms' residence at 6524 Sealy. Appellant asked Sondra to come over to appellant's apartment to visit. Before leaving Sondra's house, appellant took a blue bag out of her car and put it in an abandoned house which belonged to her parents, located next door at 6520 Sealy. Upon arrival at appellant's apartment, they found appellant's husband and two children dead.
Later that evening, homicide detective Michael Talton spoke with Nelms, who took him to the house at 6520 Sealy. Inside he found a blue bag containing a blue steel Raven Arms .25 automatic, which he turned over to a crime scene officer.

The gun's owner, Michael Mouton, had loaned the gun to his cousin, Jeffrey Frelow, five or six months prior to the murders. Jeffrey Frelow had known appellant since junior high school, and began to have a sexual relationship with her approximately one to two months prior to the murders. Frelow identified the gun and indicated that he kept it in a chest of drawers in his master bedroom. Because she often did Frelow's laundry, appellant had access to the drawers and to the gun.

On April 8, 1987, appellant accompanied Detective Michael Parinello during a search of her apartment, where she pointed out the clothing she wore the day of the murders. Parinello collected the clothing and delivered it to the Department of Public Safety Crime Laboratory to test for possible gunpowder residue.
Sterling Duane Newton, the brother of the deceased Adrian Newton, was also living at the apartment where the murders occurred, and was present on the evening of April 7, 1987. When Sterling arrived at the apartment at 5:30 or 6:00, appellant was there. Appellant requested that Sterling leave the apartment to give her some time alone with Adrian to talk over their marital problems. Sterling remained at the apartment for approximately an hour to an hour and a half before leaving.
Ramona Bell, a long time acquaintance of the deceased, Adrian Newton, had been dating him for some time prior to April 7, 1987. Bell knew that appellant and Adrian were on bad terms. Bell testified that on April 7, 1987, she called Adrian from work at approximately 6:45 p.m., and appellant answered the telephone. Bell then spoke to Adrian for about fifteen minutes. During the telephone conversation Adrian told Bell that he was tired and was going to go to sleep, but not until appellant left, because he did not trust appellant.

Alphonse Harrison, a friend of Adrian Newton, had seen him earlier in the day on April 7, 1987, and the two made plans to get together that night. Harrison testified that he called Adrian between 7:00 and 7:15 that evening, and appellant answered the telephone. Harrison never got to talk to Adrian because appellant put him on hold and left him holding for possibly 45 minutes. Harrison hung up but continued to call back and finally got an answer around 9:00 p.m., when appellant's cousin answered the telephone and told him that Adrian had been shot.

Claudia Chapman was working for a State Farm Insurance agent when she met appellant in September 1986. Appellant came in for automobile insurance, and Chapman talked to her about purchasing life insurance. On March 18, 1987, appellant purchased a fifty thousand dollar life insurance policy on herself, another on her husband, Adrian, and a third on her daughter, Farrah. According to the insurance applications, appellant was the primary beneficiary on the latter two policies, which became effective immediately. Both appellant and her mother had made claims on the policies as of the time of the trial of this cause.

A ballistics expert established that the pistol recovered by Officer Talton was the murder weapon. A forensics expert for the State established that nitrites were present on appellant's skirt. In the expert's opinion, the nitrites came from gunpowder residue, and were consistent with someone shooting a pistol in the lower front area of the skirt. He testified that another possible source of nitrites would be fertilizer. A forensic expert for appellant confirmed that nitrites could come from fertilizer.
Additional facts necessary to the issues will be presented in the sections that follow.